RadioShack Deluxe Cable Stripper

On the heels of my post relating to grounding your CATV, I thought I’d do a brief review on this inexpensive, capable coax stripper. I’d been looking online and at local hardware stores for a good quality coax stripper, and any of the really good ones were at least $30. Which, I’d be happy to pay if that’s what it would cost for a good stripper, but on a whim, I looked at RadioShack’s site, and found this, which gets decent reviews, and at the local Radioshack, was only $15! In my few tests, it does a great job, and quickly. After reading in depth about coax the last few days, I’ve read that nicking the conductor of coax when stripping it is bad, which I’m sure I’ve done on some of my crimps. So, over the next few days, I plan to redo several of the terminations in my house to perhaps improve my signal quality to my cable modem (the local demarcation point for CATV is about 10 feet from my house, so all my TV signals look great. I just hope to slightly improve my cable modem signal).

All and all, if you’re going to be doing anymore than a one off coax termination (in which case you might be able to get a friend, or a friendly cable installer to do), I’d highly recommend this stripper. Much cheaper ones are almost as expensive (I have one), and do a MUCH worse job. This one performs as well as any $25-30 I’ve seen.

The old downside being getting replacement blades. The local Radioshack I bought this from didn’t seem to have them, but from reviews, the blades should last some time, and replacement blades can be purchased online here.